In many business- or professional-related situations or the like, an age-old and recurring problem is effectuating contact between a professional or the like and a client or the like calling or otherwise attempting to contact the professional. Perhaps ideally, the client would place a telephone call or the like to the professional, the professional would answer the placed telephone call instantaneously if not within a matter of moments, the desired contact would thus be established, and the caller and professional could communicate regarding some matter of interest. Notably, however, most professionals are not always available to answer all calls instantaneously or even momentarily. For example, the professional simply may not want to answer calls, such as for example if on a vacation or at a family event, among other things, or the professional may be otherwise occupied by professional matters.
With regard to the latter case in particular, it may be that a doctor may be occupied by a medical matter and unavailable, or a lawyer may be in a legal conference from which she or he is not to be disturbed. Likewise, a funeral director may be attending to a first client while a second client is calling. In such a particular situation as well as others, it should be noted that not only is the funeral director otherwise occupied by the first client, but the nature of the funeral business is such that it would be considered to be particularly insensitive if not rude to answer the call from the second client while still attending to the first client.
Generally, it is to be recognized that a professional or the like may not always be immediately available to answer a call from a client, be it to a landline telephone line or a mobile telephone line or to such other communications device which may be available. As should be appreciated, such a situation can exist even when the client is calling regarding an urgent matter, such as a life-threatening matter or a matter that otherwise should be given immediate attention. Accordingly, it is known that such a professional may employ a business organization that provides answering services or the like (hereinafter, ‘an answering service’) to answer calls from clients when the professional is not immediately available.
As should be understood, a call to the professional is forwarded therefrom to the answering service by appropriate means when the professional is not available to answer such call or the like, and the answering service may perform a range of answering duties on behalf of the professional. For example, upon answering the call on behalf of the professional, the answering service may let the caller know when the professional is scheduled to be available, or may collect information so that the professional can return the call at an opportune time. Likewise, the answering service may perform an assessment regarding the nature of the call and based thereon may perform a range of actions. Thus, the answering service may determine that a relatively more serious matter requires more immediate action from the professional, in which case the answering service may attempt to contact the professional as soon as possible by appropriate means. Correspondingly, the answering service may determine that a relatively less serious matter requires less immediate action from the professional, in which case the answering service may only create a message for the professional to be collected thereby at a later time.
Particularly with regard to funeral directors and the special needs thereof, funeral answering services and the like have been developed to focus on and address same. Moreover, it should be understood that such funeral answering services are employed not only by funeral directors, but also by other funeral professionals that require similar heightened levels of dignity, caring, and compassion in their answering service needs. Such other funeral professionals may for example include funeral homes, cremation services, crematory facilities, cemetery and memorial parks, casket and coffin companies, livery services, trade embalmers, funeral transport services, coroners, monument companies, burial vault companies, grief and bereavement counselors, body and tissue donation services, pet cremation, burial and cemetery services, and the like.
Typically, upon a funeral business engaging an answering service to answer calls to the funeral business, the answering service engages the services of one or more telephone service providers or the like to effectuate forwarding of telephone calls or the like from the business to the answering service, particularly in a manner deemed necessary and/or advisable by the business. Such engaging and such forwarding services are generally known and need not be set forth herein in any detail other than that which is provided. Generally, the forwarding may occur on any appropriate basis, including the time of day, whether forwarding has been positively engaged or disengaged, whether the business has selected a particular call for forwarding, whether a call has rung a predetermined number of times, whether a phone or phone system of the business is off, or the like.
Notably, the answering service may answer a call on behalf of a particular funeral business according to a predetermined procedure or ‘script’ that has been established for the particular funeral business. As may be appreciated, the script can be quite involved, and can tend to cover a wide range of subjects, including the name and location of the deceased, the name, location, and telephone number of the caller, whether the caller is a family member or friend or a staff member at a nursing home or hospital or the like, where and when the funeral is to be performed, where and when burial or cremation is to be performed, required clergy, directions to establishments, parking availability and needs, handicap accessibility, available local florists and flower delivery services, and the like. In fact, such scripts can accommodate a wide range of scenarios and needs, and therefore can be quite extensive. Importantly, with the use of such a script, information can be collected from the funeral caller according to the script and entered into an appropriate database or the like for later retrieval and use, as is generally known.
It is to be understood that in at least some professional situations, an answering service acts not only to answer calls on behalf of a professional, but also acts as what likely is the first contact a caller encounters regarding a called professional. Thus, the answering service may in fact be the initial contact point for the caller with respect to the professional, and in accordance with the especially sensitive context that may be associated with the called professional, may perform a screening function to determine a level of seriousness associated with the caller, at least on an informal basis. Accordingly, if the professional is the aforementioned funeral director and the caller is requesting directions to a funeral, the level of seriousness determined therefor may be relatively low. Likewise, if such caller is newly bereaved and requesting funeral arrangements, the level of seriousness determined therefor may be relatively high.
In at least some instances, however, the level of seriousness may be so high as to be beyond that which is normal for the answering service, in which case the answering service likely cannot be of substantive help to the caller, but instead hopefully can refer the caller elsewhere immediately. Such a dire level of seriousness of the communication from the caller can be expected to vary according to the type of professional called thereby. For example, it may be that the professional is a doctor and the caller is calling for an unconscious patient, in which case an appropriate response for the answering service would be to immediately arrange for an ambulance to collect the patient. Likewise, it may be that the professional is the aforementioned funeral director and the caller is calling to arrange his or her own funeral upon the caller imminently committing suicide, in which case an appropriate response for the answering service would be to immediately place the caller in contact with a suicide prevention service.
The aforementioned funeral business or the like is especially relevant to the present scenario, in that in what may be considered the normal course of operation, an answering service answering a call on behalf of a funeral director takes special care to treat the funeral caller with dignity, caring, and compassion, as is fitting and proper. Thus, the level of seriousness associated therewith is already very high, and an agent answering callers is normally exposed to a relatively high level of stress based thereon. When such agent answers an especially dire call from a caller threatening suicide, or the like, the level of seriousness associated therewith may be considered to be extreme, and the corresponding level of stress experienced by the agent can be career-ending or even life-threatening, especially if the agent is not able to help the suicidal caller and such suicidal caller takes a drastic action while in communication with the agent.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for responding to a dire communication at an answering service or the like. In particular, a need exists for such a system and method where, when an agent at the answering service answers a call from a caller and determines that the call is of an especially high level of seriousness, the agent can immediately trigger a communications protocol to place the caller in direct communication with an external service that can better assist the caller in view of the especially high level of seriousness. Further, a need exists for such a system and method where, upon establishing such direct communication between the caller and the external service, the agent at the answering service can withdraw from the call and detach from the stress associated therewith.